Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Max noticed the moment that the two Ai systems started assigning points to targets. Not only did the pilots suddenly get excited, but they also got better at actually Piloting the drones. As expected of gamers, they could only actually focus once there was something to win.

There was a lot of betting going on right now about who would have the highest score for each shift, and the high score overall, but Felicity had prepared for that.

Not everything had any points assigned to it. Only the targets that were on the priority list had been assigned points, and the higher the priority, the higher the reward. How much effort it took to kill the target had very little to do with the points that they were getting, but most of the targets were infantry and tanks, and the difficulty was directly related to the priority anyhow.

They soon realized that not only the type of target, but the location, mattered to the points system. The ones that were on the attack and threatening either Mecha or fast attack squadrons had a point multiplier on them that would cause their score to skyrocket if they managed to take it out.

The situation in the outlying areas, where the Great Enemy was attempting to set up forward observation posts to call in more Lesser Demons and resupply their forces, was becoming quite hectic as they were mercilessly hunted down by the drone fighters.

The fast attack groups were moving outward with the Mecha squads, this time in an organized ring, forcing everything away from the base as they expanded their coverage area to encompass more of the planet.

Once they got far enough out, they would break off into independent battle lines, driving swathes of the enemy back and into more concentrated positions where they would be easier to target. That was the strategy that Felicity had decided would be the most efficient this time, and Max was willing to let it play out so that she could gain the battle experience.

Sylvie was working with her, and they both had a different training database, which had very little overlap and had not yet been compiled to eliminate redundancies and archive outdated versions of the same technique.

Often, a very similar battle strategy only needed a bit of a change to become many times more effective, and over the course of centuries, there would surely be some instances where Sylvie's techniques had been completely forgotten by both sides of the conflict, rendering them new and innovative again.

The Myceloids were also on the move, pushing their way towards the Great Enemy, but also toward the Mecha forces, in the hopes of cutting down the number of troops that the humans had for the final battle.

It was a good strategy, since they had determined that the winner between their two forces would be decided based on the challenges, and under the assumption that the humans would beat the Great Enemy on their own, which would make this battle a draw.

The fact that they hadn't told anyone else didn't occur to them. They knew that Max was here, and he always seemed to understand them so well.

Max was just about to order another push to get the Great Enemy force driven back out of a region around one of the larger lakes, when suddenly an influx of energy caught his attention. There was another portal opening, and it didn't seem to be anywhere near the existing Great Enemy base.

The Myceloids weren't aware of it yet, and he hadn't sensed anything from the Myceloid God, so either it was hiding its thoughts to keep the game interesting, or this was not part of its plan.

It could very well be another of the Gods interfering with their game to bring in reinforcements and keep the Humans from just snuffing out their troops over and over again. That would be a real mess, even if Max could deal with the Greater Energy Beings that accompanied the force, as the limitations on his firepower would make it very difficult to take out an entire attacking wave of Cathedral Ships and their troops.

"Commander, the deployment this time is very strange." Sylvie informed Max, using her projection inside his Mecha.

"How so?"

Sylvie brought up a bunch of satellite data and started to highlight it. "These units weren't there a minute ago. They're not arriving in their ships, they're arriving around their ships in a three hundred-kilometre radius. It's like a whole new deployment when we were just getting ready to surround the last one."

The Great Enemy was already given advantages this time, and now they had a whole second base going up.

"Perhaps it's a form of time trial. We need to get rid of the bases faster than they can spawn, while also winning the challenges against the Myceloids." Max suggested.

That was a possibility, the AI decided. Not a likely one, or one with a particularly high success ratio, but it was plausible that they had been thrown a time limitation to get the job done. It might be from the time of arrival, or the time of elimination of the Commanders. The conditions were unclear, making it difficult for the AI to accurately determine what was going on, and that was not a sensation that she enjoyed.

"Start sending Heavy artillery positions with drone scouts to the region. I want crabs in every grid square as soon as possible. If the infantry is going to deploy outside their defensive perimeter, they can learn to deal with our version of advanced scouts." Max informed Sylvie.

She had seen the combat footage from the Golden Legion planet, and knew the tactic that Max was going for, with the Portals being used for deployment.

"Got it. The next wave of production will be complete in five minutes, and we will send them as a whole regiment with drone support. I am tasking the volunteers to the area now with a special event points bonus." Sylvie replied.

Someone in the Alliance Sentient Rights Commission was going to spit blood in rage when they found out that his force was treating the enemy as NPCs in a video game, but for now, it was an incredibly effective way to keep the situation under control.